Transcript Chapter 8 - SCC Porter

Principles of Internet
Marketing
Chapter 8
Planning and Developing the Site
Objectives
In this chapter you will learn about:
• The beginning stages of Web site development
• The importance of understanding a site’s target
audience and how that understanding can affect
site development
• Methods for getting a site developed
• Baseline considerations for every site, including
navigation, organization, graphic design, and
content development
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Getting the Site Started
• Site developers need to take many steps before
you can begin to program a site
– Development begins with conceptualization
– Developers need to have a full understanding of
their goals and the required resources in advance of
actually building the site
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Developing the Idea
• Regardless of the Web site’s purpose, all sites start
with an idea
– To create a successful site, a developer should have
a concept about which he or she is passionate and
knowledgeable
– The idea should be on a subject of interest to the
intended audience
– It also must be able to be easily translated into a
Web site (given the budget and resources available)
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Defining the Site Objectives
• Once the developers have finalized the concept,
they must establish the objectives of the site, which
could include one or more of the following:
– To generate direct revenue through e-commerce
capabilities
– To generate indirect revenue by enticing visitors to
contact the company and engage in a business
relationship
– To build brand recognition (which ultimately leads to
generating revenue)
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Defining the Site Objectives
(continued)
– To build traffic for the purposes of generating
advertising revenue
– To meet other like-minded people
– To express opinions
– To share one’s creative talents relating to music, art,
etc.
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Needs Assessment
• Web developers conduct a thorough needs
assessment for their projects prior to beginning
development
• Skills and resources required to build a site can be
numerous and can include:
– Graphic design
– Programming
– Marketing
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Needs Assessment (continued)
– Content development
– Product inventory
– Site hosting
• These and other needs and resources cost money
– The level of financial resources that a development
team will need in order to develop a site largely
depends on the idea for the site and the level of
programming complexity
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Understanding the Audience
• In order to develop a successful Web site,
developers need to understand:
– The potential audience (their target market)
• The target market is the audience most likely to visit
their site and consume their products or services
– What the audience wants
– What the audience will likely respond to
– What will make the audience take action
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Understanding the Audience
(continued)
• Target markets are defined by demographic and
psychographic data:
– Demographic data provides information on large
groups by standard and specific population
characteristics, such as age, marital status, gender,
race, and religion
– Psychographic data defines audiences by
personality and lifestyle characteristics, such as
types of hobbies, recreational sports played, hours
per week spent online, and shopping/spending
habits
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Understanding the Audience
(continued)
• Knowledge of the target market translates into a
site’s ability to devise an effective marketing
strategy (the strategy that a site or company
employs for gaining more customers and revenue)
– Without doing any market research at all, site
developers may design the site using colors, text,
images and content that the target market won’t
relate to
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Gathering the Information
• Researchers use a number of different methods to
collect market data, including:
– Conducting personal interviews with people (either
existing clients or random people)
– Telephone surveys
– Focus groups that represent the target market are
gathered together and engaged in a discussion
about a topic of interest to the marketer
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Gathering the Information (continued)
• Newer methods of research with the growth of the
Web, including:
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Online surveys
Careful review of the blogosphere
Customer reviews
Social networking
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Gathering the Information (continued)
Figure 8-1 Sites like SurveyMonkey make
market research over the Web easy and
efficient.
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How the Target Market Affects the
Development of a Web Site
• Data that defines a target market can be used to
shape the choices made during a Web site’s
development, such as appropriate colors, graphics,
photographs, social media applications, core
messages, and personality
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Getting the Site Developed
• Businesses can handle site development one of
two ways:
– Internally by having their own employees create the
site
– Externally, by hiring another firm to build it for them
• There are pros and cons associated with both inhouse development and outsourced development
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Getting the Site Developed (continued)
• Pros of in-house development
– Potentially lower costs
– Better knowledge of the products, services and
information the site will promote
– Total control is maintained
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Getting the Site Developed (continued)
• Cons of in-house development
– Site development involves more than just
programming—It requires copy, graphic design, and
organization, which can be time consuming
– In-house development often gets pushed aside
when more pressing projects come up, resulting in
extended launch times
– It can be tough to judge the quality of work when it’s
being done in-house
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Getting the Site Developed (continued)
• Pros of outsourced development
– Faster time to launch—outside companies are more
likely to make an account their priority
– The site and message will get developed from an
outside perspective
– The outsourced company will likely have expertise in
all areas, including programming, organization,
design and copy writing
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Getting the Site Developed (continued)
• Cons of outsourced development
– Potentially more expensive
– Loss of complete control
– Outsourced company will not have direct (or as
intimate) knowledge of the products, services and
information that the site will promote
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Outsourcing from the Client’s
Perspective
• There are many questions that a company looking
to develop a Web site needs to ask when selecting
a development partner, including:
– What is the breadth of the agency’s experience?
– What is the agency’s general type of experience?
– What is the agency’s proficiency with various
programs and languages?
– Does the agency understand all of the social media
tools and how audiences interact through these
tools?
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Outsourcing from the Client’s
Perspective (continued)
• Questions when selecting a development partner
(continued):
– How large is the agency?
– Does the agency handle all aspects of the site inhouse, or does it have to outsource certain tasks,
such as the graphic design?
– What is the agency’s primary business objective?
– Will the agency provide you with client referrals?
– Has the agency had experience in the same industry
as the company hiring it?
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Outsourcing from the Client’s
Perspective (continued)
• Questions when selecting a development partner
(continued):
– How much will the project cost, and how is that
figure derived?
– Will the agency fix the site if it something goes
wrong with it after launch?
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Outsourcing from the Agency’s
Perspective
• Agencies have a different set of concerns that they
need to question and satisfy before contracting with
a new client, including:
– What is the purpose of the client’s Web site?
– What is the industry and market that the client is
serving?
– What is the client’s understanding of the Web?
– How creative will the client allow an agency to be?
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Outsourcing from the Agency’s
Perspective (continued)
• Agency questions before contracting with a new
client (continued):
– Does the client have an organized brand that can be
incorporated into the site?
– Does the client already have some content created?
– Does the client have an established budget for the
site?
– How is the client’s credit?
– How does the client typically pay?
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Web Site Navigation
• Aside from the interactivity that the Web provides,
Web sites allow visitors to review information in a
non-linear fashion, jumping from one page to
another in any order that they would like
• Due to the non-linear nature of the Web,
developers face a dual responsibility
– Create a navigation and hierarchy of content that
makes finding information easy for site visitors
– Serve information in such a way that visitors are led
to pages that the site’s owners most want them to
view
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Web Site Navigation (continued)
• Navigation should not be thought of simply as links
from one page to another, but as the specific and
planned organization of certain links, which provide
the organizational structure of a Web site
• Navigation can be provided through a number of
different methods, most commonly links within text,
graphic buttons or Flash buttons
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Web Site Navigation (continued)
• Most developers use a schematic that shows how
the content of a site will be organized and broken
down into tiers
– Once established, the navigation should remain
exactly the same on all pages, to avoid confusion
– Within each category, other topic-related pages may
be required, known as the second tier of the site
– Lower tiers of a site are usually accessed through a
separate navigation system for each category, or as
drop down items from the main navigation menu
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Web Site Navigation (continued)
Figure 8-6 A basic schematic that shows the categories of
information that are directly accessible from the Home page
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Web Site Navigation (continued)
Figure 8-7 The schematic has expanded to show the pages that are
accessible from each category. These are second tier pages.
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Web Site Navigation (continued)
Figure 8-8 The schematic has been expanded even further to show the
individual pages that can be accessed through second tier pages. These
pages are considered third tier
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Web Site Navigation (continued)
Figure 8-9 The main navigation for this site appears across the top. This
page, on consulting services, presents second tier navigation on bar down
the left hand side of the page. Both areas are highlighted in the figure.
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Web Site Navigation (continued)
Figure 8-10 This site uses drop-down menus for the navigation, giving
easy access to all pages within all categories, from anyplace on the site.
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Navigation Elements: Search Engines,
Site Maps, Tag Clouds, and
Breadcrumbs
• Along with the standard navigation, other means of
finding information also help users find info
– Search engines invite users to type in a word or
phrase that they wish to search for within a site
– Site maps re-create the original schematic on the
site
– A tag cloud is a collection of tags (or keywords) that
are popular among users
– Breadcrumbs are an aid to determining one’s
location within the site, by showing the path of links
the visitor took to get to the page they are on.
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Navigation Elements: Search Engines,
Site Maps, Tag Clouds, and
Breadcrumbs (continued)
Figure 8-11 The Wal-Mart site provide a search engine for finding
products front and center at the top of the page.
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Navigation Elements: Search Engines,
Site Maps, Tag Clouds, and
Breadcrumbs (continued)
Figure 8-12 The site map on the Apple Web site
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Navigation Elements: Search Engines,
Site Maps, Tag Clouds, and
Breadcrumbs (continued)
Figure 8-13 The tag cloud on the flickr site
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Page Layout
• Successful site layout will accomplish very specific
goals:
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Make the purposes of the site clear
Promote the brand
Provide easy access to information
Lead the user to specific areas of interest or areas
that the site owner wants them to see
– Provide an attractive, aesthetically pleasing
environment for the user
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Page Layout (continued)
• Sites will typically have two page layouts: One for
the Home page, and a second for all interior pages
– Sites tend to be more graphic heavy on the Home
page, where the pages need to catch the user’s eye
and entice them to browse further
– In the lower tiers, after the visitor has already
committed to exploring the site, pages tend to be
more copy or content heavy
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Page Layout (continued)
Figure 8-15 and Figure 8-16 The home page layout and interior page
layout of a B2B site
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Page Layout (continued)
• In developing the layout, developers often try to
design sites for the lowest common denominator—
The worst viewing conditions that could reasonably
be expected
• Developers need to put important information
above the fold—where any page might be cut off
by the bottom of the browser window
– The area above the fold is considered the most
valuable real estate on the site
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Graphic Design
• Sites often reinvent themselves as the need to
update content grows, new tools—such as social
media applications—become available, and design
styles evolve
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Graphic Design (continued)
• While styles change, all Web-based graphic design
shares the same commonalities:
– Graphics are typically displayed in one of two bitmap
formats
• JPGs can use millions of colors to display each image
and are static; they cannot be animated
• GIFs use far less colors in their representation, and
can be animated (although animated GIFS are often
somewhat crude)
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Graphic Design (continued)
• While styles change, all Web-based graphic design
shares the same commonalities (continued):
– Bitmap graphics are sized to 72 pixels per inch
• Which is how computer monitors display information
– Colors in graphics are presented in RGB
• A combination of red, green, and blue that can be
shown on a computer monitor
– Vector graphics cannot recreate photographic quality
in an image, but they are good for illustrations
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Content Development
• Content for a site (copy, video, blogs, etc) comes
from two sources:
– The developers or marketers of a site, who present
content that appropriately represents their site,
brand and message
– User-generated content provided by visitors to the
site (YouTube, Facebook, etc)
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Summary
• All sites begin with an idea
– It is important to work from an idea about which the
developer is passionate and knowledgeable and that
the audience will be interested in
– It is equally important to define the objectives of the
site so that it can be built to meet the stated goals
– It is also essential to assess the particular needs of
the site, including appropriate financing
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Summary (continued)
• Understanding the audience is vital for both the site
and the brand
– Without this understanding, it is practically
impossible to build a site specifically for a target
market
• Marketers have several different tools for collecting
market data on a specific audience, which is
defined by the demographic and psychographic
traits its members share in common
– These methods include conducting surveys,
organizing focus groups, and tracking usage of the
blogosphere and other social media
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Summary (continued)
• Sites can either be developed in-house or by hiring
a third party developer
– Each of these options comes with certain pros and
cons, specifically in terms of cost, speed to
completion, and knowledge of content.
– When working with an outside company, the
relationship is vital to site success, and each party
needs to carefully understand and analyze the other
before engagement
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Summary (continued)
• Basic site design and development issues that all
sites need to consider include navigation, which is
critical to helping move users from one page to
another
• Navigation needs to be planned in advance and be
consistent throughout the site
– Sites get organized into tiers, with lower tiers
favoring content over aesthetics
• Creating a page layout that fully engages site
visitors is similarly important, as is developing
appropriate content.
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